Current and future prospect of Raman spectroscopy

Raman spectroscopy, the spectroscopic method based on Raman scattering phenomena, has been used for decades to characterize organic and inorganic materials based on basic molecular structure and functional groups in fundamental and applied research fields. It is unambiguously termed the molecular fingerprinting technique. Conventional Raman spectroscopy and its derivatives such as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, confocal Raman microscopy, Raman microspectroscopy, resonance Raman spectroscopy, coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering, and single-cell Raman spectroscopy have been applied in biological, medicinal, material sciences, and environmental research, and Raman spectroscopy-based instruments are widely used for material identification-characterization applications. The noble attractions of Raman spectroscopy are its robust and versatile nature with simple instrumentation requirements and speed of analyzing samples. Although conventional Raman spectroscopy suffers from poor Raman scattering activity, it has been overcome by modifying the systems to perform the abovementioned Raman spectroscopy varieties and is successfully employed in multiple applications.